To boost ourselves, we must spend time thinking. First, we must contemplate that desire doesn’t make us happy. By nature, we assume that the stronger the pull, the greater the pleasure and happiness it brings. But this is false. Think about it. Play out what happens when you give in. Does it make you happy? Think about how you feel afterward. Contemplate that the pleasure doesn’t live up to the hype, and realize the yetzer hara is lying to you once again. Master these ideas and write an essay for yourself about why giving in is not worth it. Then, read Chapters 3 and 9 over, and spend a few minutes thinking about this every night.
If you ever err and give in, compare how you felt with what you expected to feel. Show yourself that it wasn’t worth it and that you don’t want to engage in this behavior. Then, set aside a time every night when you will think about this for a few minutes. In this manner, you can capitalize on your mistakes to attain a higher understanding and strength.
When under the influence of desire, we lose touch with reality and accept irrational feelings as fact. What we desire becomes the most incredible thing in our eyes. But contemplating how desire never delivers on its promise stops this from happening. We know that no physical pleasure can live up to the yetzer hara’s sales pitch. Though it might feel good, it doesn’t make us happy. Attaining the pleasure doesn’t make us feel good about ourselves. It doesn’t make us feel significant. Indulging in pleasure when we have lost control just makes us feel empty and leaves us with nothing. Clearly, desire is nothing to get excited about. We didn’t need it until the yetzer hara made us want it, and we don’t need it to be happy or to get ahead.
Another point to ponder is that things will change. Time will pass and the future will come. When the yetzer hara gets us excited about sin, he often sells us by making us focus only on the moment of pleasure as if it’s all that exists. But we can preempt this by remembering that the future will come. We will have to deal with the consequences of our decision very soon. Deciding to indulge won’t make us happy forever, and we definitely won’t experience the pleasure forever. It ends quickly, and we are left with nothing except regret and erosion of our self-respect.
Though this is obvious, we must think about it frequently to internalize it and really feel it. Our emotions don’t follow common sense. We tend to feel that life will always be the way it is now, even though we know logically that it won’t. In addition, as part of his sales pitch, the yetzer hara makes us feel that the time of pleasure is the only moment that matters. It takes work for us to change the way we feel and match it with the truth.